American Born Chinese Themes

American Born Chinese tells three interweaving stories: those of the Monkey King, Jin Wang, and Danny. The Monkey king is a Chinese deity who, after being denied entrance to a party in Heaven for not wearing shoes, goes to great lengths to make himself more human. Jin is a second-generation Chinese American junior high school student in a primarily white California suburb. Danny is a white high school student whose life is…

Racism and the idea of the foreign “other” are woven in throughout the book in a variety of ways, one of the most significant of which is the way that the book handles the intersection between racism and popular culture, specifically when it comes to television media. The chapters telling Danny and Chin-Kee’s story are set up to read like a sitcom, Everyone Ruvs Chin-Kee with elements like a laugh track and organization that…

American Born Chinese’s unique format as a graphic novel that utilizes three unconventional narrative techniques—pairing visual illustrations with text, switching among three interconnected stories, and simulating the form of a sitcom TV show—shows that Gene Luen Yang is acutely aware of the importance of telling a variety of stories in a variety of ways. By using such a wide range of communication tools and modes, American Born Chinese suggests that one of the best…